Eisenhower approved the use of a salitral to test the U-2 aircraft. Some documents include the first known official reference.The area remains fenced and is forbidden to civil aircraft.

TerraServer.com website Aerial photos of the base of the Pentagon.

CIA documents confirmed this week the existence of the military base ‘Area 51′ in Nevada (USA), but do not show no sign of aliens who, according to conspiracy theories, were taken to the secret enclave which tested spy planes during the Cold War.

The documents, obtained by George Washington University, including the first official known about the site, created by order of President Dwight Eisenhower in the mid-1950s. These reports, so far classified, covering the program design, development and testing of U.S. spy planes since the Cold War, when Eisenhower approved the use of a salt flat in southwestern Nevada for testing the plane U-2, capable of flying at high altitudes and long distances covered.

The existence of ‘Area 51′ has not been a secret, but the fact that the government never recognize its existence and from there you carry out missions by aircraft with test structure was unprecedented generated a host of conspiracy theories, including the existence extraterrestrial technology.

These theories argue, among other things, that there were transferred the remains of a supposed alien craft would have crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. Another theory has argued that U.S. scientists did experiments in the area of ​​radiation tolerance of Japanese prisoners of war before the launch in 1945 of the first atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Evidence in the Cold War

In April 1955 the military officers who planned the development of a spy plane flying over the Nevada desert in search of a suitable site for secret evidence and spotted what appeared to be a hint of landings in a salt flat called Groom Lake, according to the documents newly released. The area had been used during World War II as a polygon for aerial gunnery and the site was chosen to test the U-2 spy planes and training of its pilots.

The first tests took place in August 1955 and on that site tested other spy planes like the A-12 and D-21. The U-2, whose purpose was to spy on the Soviet Union and its allies, are still used by the U.S. Air Force.

The area in the Nevada desert remains fenced and airspace is closed to civilian aircraft. Documents released include numerous references to ‘Area 51′, with a map, as well as the names of all pilots U-2 missions with dates and routes of flights over the Soviet Union. There is also a story of U-2 operations on India between 1962 and 1967 who responded to the war between India and China in 1962 and China missions.